Sliders

Turn a letter into a dial you can drag, and watch the graph respond.

When you use a letter the calculator does not recognise — like a in y = a x^2 — it creates a slider for it. Drag the slider and the graph updates live, so you can see what a coefficient does: a larger a makes the parabola narrower; changing b in y = x + b slides the line up and down.

Sliders shine on “which value makes the graph pass through this point?” questions. Drag until the curve hits the point — or set the slider to each answer choice and watch.

1. Type y = a*x^2 into a row.A slider for a appears beneath the expressions.
2. Drag the slider up and down.The parabola gets narrower as a grows, wider as it shrinks, and flips when a goes negative.